Yuma At last

 Yesterday, after a nice slow morning enjoying coffee and blogging,  I visited Carrizo Plain National Monument. Never heard of this one either, have you? It's certainly not on the way to anywhere, very poorly signed, and down 30-some miles of rough road that the map says is a dead end. After coming over a small mountain range and lots of those low, brown hills, it's startling to come upon this vast, flat, treeless plain. At 2200 feet it's cool...the woman at the visitor center says it was down in the single digits at night recently.... and one of the sunniest places in the state.  Like Pinnacles, it sits right on the San Andreas fault. I wish I had time to spend a day or two there. Just driving through, it seems like there's no "there" there, but it's so, so quiet, and I can only imagine what the stars would be like. They've had no rain (well, .28") so far this year, so Soda Lake, which has no outlet, is dry and white with salt deposits. And yet there are birds everywhere, and squirrels, and kangaroo rats, and coyotes.... what do they drink???

I took a drive on a side road in the park, and had to clear several tumbleweed roadblocks.

Driving on past where my roadmap said the road dead-ended (but the park attendant assured me it didn't), I eventually got back to a highway which took me over the Temblor Range, and what a shock at the top.... A view of flat forever. Coasting down a long 7% grade brought me into a long, straight stretch of irrigated desert filled with mile after mile of orange groves.

Then on the freeway towards Los Angeles, up over that beautiful 4000' mountain pass and down into the beginnings of the metropolis. I decided I wasn't up for navigating the city during rush hour, so opted to stay for the night in Santa Clarita, home of Six Flags over California, aka, I think, Magic Mountain, since my hotel was on Magic Mountain Parkway, in sight of rollercoasters.

Something I meant to write about yesterday after my Pinnacles adventure. As I was climbing up those footholds cut in the rocks, it came to me that no one in the world knew where I was, and I had only seen maybe a half-dozen other hikers all day, and I definitely did NOT have the 10 essentials with me. Probably not the smartest thing. But I was careful and I survived.... to do a drive on backroads in the desert the next day, thinking much the same thing. 

Right now I'm just east of San Diego having lunch. Another 2.5 hours to Yuma, where hopefully I'll have plenty of time to do washing and a little shopping before driving another hour or so to meet up with my Sierra Club trip. Also hoping to find a bike shop...Ipad says there's one near my hotel....where I can leave my bike to be cleaned up and tuned a bit. It's pretty sad looking after driving those dusty desert roads yesterday, needs a tune-up anyway, and I'm hoping I can leave it at a bike shop so I don't have to leave it on the back of my car, which will be parked somewhere out in the desert for the 4 days we'll be canoeing.

Later: Yuma at last! In my shorts, having a beer. Dropped my bike off, the laundry's in the wash, heading to Supercuts, just down the road, when it's done.

What a drive! Sea level at San Diego, then over three 4000+ foot passes, then back to sea level in the desert. This has got to be one of the most scenic freeway drives I've ever taken. The mountains east of San Diego are strewn, covered, with amazing house-sized boulders. No trees, just boulders and desert, even at 4000 feet. Then down below, after miles of scrub-desert, there are miles of beautiful sand dunes (the Algodones dunes, I think). When I biked through near  here in 2005, those dunes were covered with beautiful purple flowers, but that was in March; no sign of anything but sand this time. And dune buggies.

It's been a great trip so far, but I'm happy to not be driving much for the next couple of weeks. Just to the meeting point with Sierra Club tomorrow, and then next weekend from here to Las Vegas to meet up with WomanTours for the bike trip through Death Valley.

Too tired to mess with uploading pictures tonight....